Vilhelm Moberg's Way to History

VILHELM MOBERG'S WAY TO HISTORY
GUNNAR EIDEVALL
"The dream of my youth was to be a historian. For one reason
only: I wanted to k n o w ."
These words, written i n English in Moberg's own hand, can
be found among the vast working material concerning his four
emigrant novels that Vilhelm Moberg in 1968 presented to the
Emigrant Institute at Växjö, Sweden. With these words Mo­berg
intended to begin a lecture that he had been asked to de­liver
in 1966 at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and
i n their simple straightforwardness they tell us much about
Moberg's life-long interest in history, an interest that finally
led to his last epic work, M i n s v e n s k a h i s t o r i a (1970, 1971).
Moberg's interest in history was aroused in his early child­hood.
In one of his autobiographical essays in Berättelser u r
m i n l e v n a d (1968), entitled "The School in the Forest," Moberg
writes: "Historia var det enda ämne som verkligt fängslade mig.
Det var rentav roligt, det enda på skolans schema som var roligt.
Därför lärde jag mig också åtskilligt i ämnet. Vår lärobok var
Fäderneslandets H i s t o r i a för s k o l a n s lägre k l a s s e r av C. T.
Odhner, tolfte översedda upplagan."1 To him as a boy this
schoolbook about Swedish history was a story book filled with
adventures in which the Swedes were brave and noble heroes,
fighting against sly and cruel enemies.
Later in life, he realized that he had only gained a distorted
idea of his own country's history, and his search for knowledge
began. At 18, Moberg spent almost a year at a "folkhögskola"
where he studied a lot of history. In his novel, S o l d a t m e d b r u t e t
gevär (1944)—to a great extent autobiographical—we are told
that Valter Sträng, his alter ego, knew much more history than
the other students, since he had already studied the history of
revolutions and class-struggles. But he now realized that he
still had lots to learn, and his teacher made history come alive
for the young student.
Much later, when Moberg in Berättelser u r m i n l e v n a d looks
173
back upon "The Books in My Life," he states that, outside the
world of fiction, history has been his great passion all through
life, all sorts of history: "Jag har varit besatt av nyfikenhet på
mänsklighetens förflutna."2
This curiosity, which is an eagerness to know, a search for
facts, clarity, and truth, guided Moberg through life, and de­termined
his development as a writer. His novels are based on
documentary studies and an expert knowledge which lent an air
of exactitude and authenticity even to his first novel, R a s k e ns
(1927).
Moberg has stated that his first historical novel was published
in 1933: M a n s k v i n n a , a novel from Småland in the 1790s. Mans
k v i n n a is generally looked upon as a story of passionate love and
desire for freedom, but from a historical viewpoint the most
interesting part of the novel is what the main male character,
Håkan Ingelsson, hears about one of his forefathers from the
seventeenth century, Stark-Ingel, "the man in the forest." Stark-
Ingel refused to yield to the authorities, the sheriff and the
clergyman; he left his village and chose to live in freedom in
the backwoods, where he finally drowned in a swamp. Like
Stark-Ingel, Håkan Ingelsson decides to turn to the forest, and
in this respect Mans k v i n n a points towards R i d i n a t t , Moberg's
first fully documented historical novel.
Through the kind permission of Moberg's family, I have been
allowed to study most of the material left after Moberg's death.
It turns out that the title R i d i n a t t was decided on only after
the manuscript had been finished in August, 1941. Till then
other titles were used, e. g. Skoggångaren, and M a n n e n i s k o g e n ,
all of them relating to the story of Stark-Ingel in M a n s k v i n n a.
Originally, Moberg had found the story about the man in the
forest among the historical documents in Hyltén-Cavallius' re­nowned
study Wärend o c h W i r d a r n e (1864, 1868). Because of
the situation in Scandinavia when R i d i n a t t was published in
1941—Denmark and Norway being occupied by German troops—
this novel about Ragnar Svedje's fight for freedom after he left
his village for the forests, became a symbol for resistance against
violence and oppression. But R i d i n a t t was also a historical
novel, set in Småland in 1650, and in 1942 a couple of historians
criticized Moberg for historical inaccuracies in his novel.
174
Moberg defended his cause with knowledge and ease; he re­ferred
to his source material and showed that i n all essentials
his novel is plausible. Many years later, Professor Gerhard
Hafström i n a thorough study proved that Moberg's novel R i d i
n a t t in no respect gives the wrong picture of conditions in Små­land
in the 1650s (See E m i g r a t i o n e r , 1968).
To Moberg, the debate in 1942 was of great importance for
the future, and in 1943 he contributed a long article ("Om his­toriska
romanen") to the calendar V i n t e r g a t a n . Here he stated
his view on imaginative historical writing in the following way:
"Ett enda, oavvisligt krav bör ställas på ett arbete, som upp­träder
som en historisk roman: Det skall göra en försvunnen
tids miljö levande för läsarnas fantasi och ge så mycken illusion
av gången verklighet, att händelseförloppet kan godtagas som
möjligt."3
Three key-expressions can be sorted out in Moberg's long
article, and they sum up his demands on the historical novel:
it must be vividly lucid, historically convincing, and create i l l u ­sion
of reality. Moberg maintains that a historical novel must
be convincing and credible, but this must not be confused with
demanding historical exactitude. "History tells us what has hap­pened,
the novel what might have happened," he wrote in a new
article on historical novels in O t r o n s a r t i k l a r (1973).
The starting point for Moberg as a writer of fiction is reality,
but he must not copy reality, he must also make full use of his
power of imagination and thus create an illusion of reality. In
the same essay in O t r o n s a r t i k l a r Moberg said of Strindberg and
his stories in S v e n s k a öden o c h äventyr: "Strindberg slarvade
mer än någon före honom med det historiska, men i n sina berät­telser
gav han läsarna full illusion av en historisk verklighet. I
dikten återskapade han det förflutna och väckte dess männi­skor
till liv igen."4
Moberg's aim i n his historical novels is to reach Strindberg's
ability to create illusion and to be vividly lucid and convincing.
In his emigrant novels Moberg managed to make his characters
so convincing that to some readers they came alive. It has been
said that people have come to the cemetery at Chisago Lake to
put flowers on Kristina's tombstone, and to the parish church
at Ljuder i n Småland to have a look at the bridal crown that
175
U l r i k a i Västergöhl, the Glad One, donated to the church in
Moberg's novel S i s t a b r e v e t t i l l S v e r i g e (1959).
In his novels Moberg also makes use of what he, in his young
years, learned from Edgar Allan Poe's way of writing. Poe's
technique Moberg described in this way i n Berättelser u r m i n
l e v n a d : "Han hopar i historiens början en mängd vardagliga,
triviala detaljer av full trovärdighet och övergår så långsamt
och skickligt till de otroliga händelserna, att den fängslade lä­saren
inte upptäcker skarven."5
Moberg used the same technique in the first chapters of his
emigrant novel, U t v a n d r a r n a (1949). He gives a detailed account
of the actual conditions in Ljuder parish i n Småland in 1846,
and he also tells the true story of the religious group "åkianer¬
na" in the 1780s. But right there he turns from reality to fiction:
from a world of facts, figures, names, we are carried into a world
of fiction, where the author makes "åkianismen" appear again
in the 1840s of the novel.
There is no historical reality behind this, but a great deal of
probability. Moberg's characters emigrated from Småland in
1850. By that time the Baptists had begun to appear in parts
of Småland, and sheriffs and clergymen took action against this
"heresy." In the late 1840s more than one thousand people from
some northern Swedish provinces emigrated to America, after
being denied their rights to worship God in the way their leader,
Eric Janson, taught them. The consequence of this was an ex­odus
that resulted in the founding of the Bishop H i l l colony in
Illinois.
This is the historical background for what Moberg in his emi­grant
epic relates about the persecution of Danjel Andreasson
and "åkianerna" and their decision to emigrate to America. To
make his description even more convincing, he mixed authentic
dialogs and events from the trials i n the 1780s against the real
"åkianer." Altogether it must be said about Moberg's descrip­tion
that you cannot get closer to the historical truth i n writing
an imaginative historical novel.
In my book, V i l h e l m M o b e r g s e m i g r a n t e p o s (1974), I have
shown to what extent Moberg used a documentary background in
writing his four emigrant novels. His sources were of various
kinds: scientific books on emigration and contemporary descrip-
178
tions of travels to and life in the Middle West, manuscripts and
settlers' diaries, collections of letters from emigrants, maps,
pamphlets and emigrant handbooks, an old textbook of science
and a cookbook, church records and calendars, and all sorts of
notices and articles in newspapers, especially H e m l a n d e t , the old
Swedish-American newspaper. In many cases only written doc­uments
could give him the necessary background for his novels,
but if possible he wanted further evidence. He corresponded
with experts and people with local knowledge, he visited muse­ums
and took lots of notes, and he talked to old settlers in M i n ­nesota.
A l l the facts and episodes he collected, he used in order
to give an air of authenticity to his novels. He copied and quoted,
but above all he reshaped and rearranged what he found so as
to suit his purpose, and he fused all his disparate sources into his
own world of fiction.
Moberg's emigrant novels have a solid documentary back­ground,
and on this foundation he builds his own house of fic­tion.
His epic is first and foremost a story of some persons who
emigrated from Småland to America, not a history of Swedish
emigration. To Moberg, his emigrant epic was also a link in ful­filling
the plan for his writing that he had clearly worded in
the last pages of the novel S o l d a t m e d b r u t e t gevär in 1944: to
describe in his books the poor and nameless people of the past
all those whom history had forgotten. That plan he fulfilled to
the very last in writing M i n s v e n s k a h i s t o r i a , berättad för f o l k et
(=told to the people).
Moberg also held the view that people are basically the same
through the centuries. There would e. g. be no differences, he
argued, in thoughts and opinions between 1780 and 1850 among
the common people i n a small, rural parish. Therefore, it is im­portant
for an author to be able to listen to the voices of the
past, to recreate its world and its people, and make it all come
to life again. Now and then, here and there, are fused and con­fused
in his historical novels, and the same is true of Moberg's
Swedish history. In volume one of M m s v e n s k a h i s t o r i a (1970),
Moberg stated as one of his principles in the foreword: "under
historievandringen går jag ständigt från det förflutna till det
närvarande och från det närvarande tillbaka till det förflutna;
jag anser nämligen att jämförelser och paralleller med gången
177
tid kan belysa och förklara vår egen, medan exempel från vår
tid belyser och förklarar det förgångna.""
Using this freedom of an historical traveller, going from the
past to the present and vice versa, Moberg, e. g., in volume two
(1971) describes "the women outside history." From a few lines
in the parish register about his own great-grandmother who was
"found dead on the ground," from data in old enlistment rolls
about the lives of the soldiers in their small soldier's cottages,
from present-day traces in the deep forests of grey stones, laid
out in a rectangle indicating that people once lived here, from
this scanty documentary evidence Moberg re-creates the past
and makes its people come alive again. The lives of the wom­en
in the soldiers' cottages were never recorded in any written
document, but Moberg knows how they lived i n the nineteenth
century through his own family, and their lives, he argues, must
essentially have been the same some centuries earlier.
Moberg's ability to re-create the past forms the basis of his
historical novels as well as of his own Swedish history. He used
this technique in writing the novel B r u d a r n a s källa (1946),
where four musicians come to life: one from the beginning of
the twentieth century, one from the days of pestilence i n 1710,
one from the days of King Gustav Vasa and the rebel Nils Dacke,
and one from pre-historical time, in the days of pagan sun-worship.
People from all these days and times are fused to­gether,
their life and work, their sufferings and joys, their be­ginnings
and ends melt together in the eternal recurrence of
history.
Moberg's last novel, Förrädarland (1967), makes it even
clearer that he looked upon history as a means of understand­ing
our own times—the past becomes a mirror in which we can
study ourselves. The novel describes the evil of violence and
war and the sufferings of the common people along the Swedish-
Danish border in the 1520s, but at the same time it reflects the
sufferings and hardship of all common people in any country at
any time.
When writing Förrädarland, Moberg had already spent a
couple of years studying medieval history, originally planning
a novel about the Black Death in the fourteenth century. No
such novel was written; instead his increasing interest i n his-
178
torical research made him decide to write his own history of the
Swedish people. When the first volume of M i n s v e n s k a h i s t o r ia
appeared in 1970, one of the chapters dealt with the Black Death.
Moberg had finally turned from writing historical novels to writ­ing
a narrative history.
In his preface to the first volume Moberg paid his tribute to
Anders Fryxell, i n Moberg's opinion "the Swedish master," who
in the nineteenth century wrote stories from Swedish history
for the young in forty-six volumes. It is above all Fryxell's un­orthodox
outlook on history that Moberg admired, but he also
felt a deep sympathy with Fryxell as a writer. In his autobi­ographical
book M i n h i s t o r i a s h i s t o r i a (1908), Fryxell describes
his passion for history, his toilsome and yet pleasant work, col­lecting
all the documentary facts, and his delight at planning
and imagining the forthcoming volumes. In all this Moberg
recognized himself and his own way of working, and for both
Fryxell and Moberg writing was their way of living.
The second volume of his history Moberg dedicated to Fabian
Månsson. In Månsson's dramatic and realistic way of making
history come alive, and in his clear defense of the rebel Nils
Dacke and the cause of the common people against King Gustav
Vasa and other rulers and authorities, Moberg again found a
spiritual twin. For Strindberg, F r y x e l l and Månsson as historical
narrators Moberg felt a deep sympathy, but Geijer and Grim-berg
in Moberg's eyes had a loyal and reverent approach to his­tory
that he could not appreciate.
Moberg's history is above all his own history, and he himself
laid great emphasis on the word "my" in the title of the two
volumes of M i n s v e n s k a h i s t o r i a . In his preface to the first
volume he stated: "Jag återger objektiva fakta, men tolkningen
av dem är min egen subjektiva."7
In his history Moberg often gave voice to his personal opinion
of the great characters in Swedish history, and he clearly stated
what he liked and disliked. His portraits of Engelbrekt and
Nils Dacke, with whom he felt deep sympathy and understanding,
as well as that of Gustav Vasa, whom he regarded as a tyrant
and criticized severely, are fascinating and engaging. But he
found the greatest pleasure in writing those chapters where he
could be personal and make himself, and his forefathers, heard:
179
chapters on the Swedish peasant, on the bark-bread, the forests,
the villages, and all the anonymous people of history. Here he
could travel freely from past to present, and here he could feel
free to write in a more narrative and epic way.
Only two volumes were published of Moberg's M i n s v e n s ka
h i s t o r i a , and the material that was left after Moberg's death is
very limited and sketchy, collected in three very thin folders.
In a letter to Dr. Ragnar Svanström, a well-known historian
and from 1969 Moberg's publisher, he enclosed a "very prelimi­nary
list of contents for a planned third volume," dated February
7, 1972, and going from Nils Dacke to Axel Oxenstierna and
the year 1650, altogether a list of thirteen chapters. But almost
nothing of this was written. Moberg was tired, very often i l l ,
sleepless and depressed, and he sometimes felt that the material
grew too large and heavy: "—jag riskerar att bryta ryggen av
mig under dess massa,"s as he wrote in another letter to Dr.
Svanström.
In the remaining material there are a few pages with notes
on the sons of Gustav Vasa, showing that Eric X I V both fasci­nated
and repelled Moberg, while Johan III bored him and K a rl
I X was repulsive to him. But most of the material concerns
Olaus Petri, whom Moberg regarded as the greatest Swedish
personality of the sixteenth century. He admired his many-sided
talents, his honesty and his moral courage. He stresses
Olaus Petri's passion for social justice and his attempts to de­fend
the rights of the common people. In his notes he also at­tacks
Strindberg for having portrayed Olaus Petri as a renegade
in his historical drama Mäster O l o f , and Moberg writes: "Den
historiske Olof var sannerligen ingen avfälling. Det var konsek­vens
i hans gärning."9 Moberg maintained that Olaus Petri all his
life continued his criticism of King Gustav Vasa, and he found
it revolting that Olaus Petri's great historical chronicle was
suppressed by the king and not printed in Sweden until 1818.
One sentence in the sketchy material Moberg may have planned
to use as a final sentence in his chapter on Olaus Petri: "Kungen
segrade i samtiden, Olaus har segrat inför eftervärlden."10
Not even the chapter on Olaus Petri was completed, however,
before Moberg died in August, 1973. But the various drafts and
180
sketches prove that this chapter would have been yet another
fascinating story of a man who fought for truth and liberty
against oppression and authorities.
NOTES
1 "History was the only subject which really fascinated me. It was actu­ally
fun, the only thing on the curriculum which was fun. So I learned
various things about the subject, too. Our textbook was C. T. Odhner's
T h e H i s t o r y of t h e Fatherland for the Lower G r a d e s in its twelfth re­vised
edition."
- "I have been obsessed by curiosity about mankind's past."
8 "One single absolute demand should be placed on a work which claims
to be an historical novel: It must make the milieu of a period in the past
live in the reader's imagination and give so much an illusion of past reality
that the action can be accepted as possible."
4 "Strindberg was more careless about historical matters than any prede­cessor,
but in his stories he gave the readers thorough illusion of historic
reality. In his creative writing he recreated the past and brought its peo­ple
alive again."
5 "In the beginning of the story he heaps up a great many everyday,
trivial details that are absolutely believable and then so slowly and skill­fully
goes on to the unbelievable events that the reader does not discover
the exaggeration."
6 "during my wandering through history I go regularly from the past to
the present and from the present back to the past; I believe comparisons
and parallels with the past can throw light on and explain the present
while examples from our time throw light on and explain the past."
7 "I present objective facts, but the interpretation is my own subjective
one."
8 "I'm risking breaking my back under this burden."
9 "The historic Olof was certainly no renegade. There was consistency
in all he did."
1 0 "The king won in his day; Olaus has won before posterity."
181

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VILHELM MOBERG'S WAY TO HISTORY
GUNNAR EIDEVALL
"The dream of my youth was to be a historian. For one reason
only: I wanted to k n o w ."
These words, written i n English in Moberg's own hand, can
be found among the vast working material concerning his four
emigrant novels that Vilhelm Moberg in 1968 presented to the
Emigrant Institute at Växjö, Sweden. With these words Mo­berg
intended to begin a lecture that he had been asked to de­liver
in 1966 at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and
i n their simple straightforwardness they tell us much about
Moberg's life-long interest in history, an interest that finally
led to his last epic work, M i n s v e n s k a h i s t o r i a (1970, 1971).
Moberg's interest in history was aroused in his early child­hood.
In one of his autobiographical essays in Berättelser u r
m i n l e v n a d (1968), entitled "The School in the Forest," Moberg
writes: "Historia var det enda ämne som verkligt fängslade mig.
Det var rentav roligt, det enda på skolans schema som var roligt.
Därför lärde jag mig också åtskilligt i ämnet. Vår lärobok var
Fäderneslandets H i s t o r i a för s k o l a n s lägre k l a s s e r av C. T.
Odhner, tolfte översedda upplagan."1 To him as a boy this
schoolbook about Swedish history was a story book filled with
adventures in which the Swedes were brave and noble heroes,
fighting against sly and cruel enemies.
Later in life, he realized that he had only gained a distorted
idea of his own country's history, and his search for knowledge
began. At 18, Moberg spent almost a year at a "folkhögskola"
where he studied a lot of history. In his novel, S o l d a t m e d b r u t e t
gevär (1944)—to a great extent autobiographical—we are told
that Valter Sträng, his alter ego, knew much more history than
the other students, since he had already studied the history of
revolutions and class-struggles. But he now realized that he
still had lots to learn, and his teacher made history come alive
for the young student.
Much later, when Moberg in Berättelser u r m i n l e v n a d looks
173
back upon "The Books in My Life," he states that, outside the
world of fiction, history has been his great passion all through
life, all sorts of history: "Jag har varit besatt av nyfikenhet på
mänsklighetens förflutna."2
This curiosity, which is an eagerness to know, a search for
facts, clarity, and truth, guided Moberg through life, and de­termined
his development as a writer. His novels are based on
documentary studies and an expert knowledge which lent an air
of exactitude and authenticity even to his first novel, R a s k e ns
(1927).
Moberg has stated that his first historical novel was published
in 1933: M a n s k v i n n a , a novel from Småland in the 1790s. Mans
k v i n n a is generally looked upon as a story of passionate love and
desire for freedom, but from a historical viewpoint the most
interesting part of the novel is what the main male character,
Håkan Ingelsson, hears about one of his forefathers from the
seventeenth century, Stark-Ingel, "the man in the forest." Stark-
Ingel refused to yield to the authorities, the sheriff and the
clergyman; he left his village and chose to live in freedom in
the backwoods, where he finally drowned in a swamp. Like
Stark-Ingel, Håkan Ingelsson decides to turn to the forest, and
in this respect Mans k v i n n a points towards R i d i n a t t , Moberg's
first fully documented historical novel.
Through the kind permission of Moberg's family, I have been
allowed to study most of the material left after Moberg's death.
It turns out that the title R i d i n a t t was decided on only after
the manuscript had been finished in August, 1941. Till then
other titles were used, e. g. Skoggångaren, and M a n n e n i s k o g e n ,
all of them relating to the story of Stark-Ingel in M a n s k v i n n a.
Originally, Moberg had found the story about the man in the
forest among the historical documents in Hyltén-Cavallius' re­nowned
study Wärend o c h W i r d a r n e (1864, 1868). Because of
the situation in Scandinavia when R i d i n a t t was published in
1941—Denmark and Norway being occupied by German troops—
this novel about Ragnar Svedje's fight for freedom after he left
his village for the forests, became a symbol for resistance against
violence and oppression. But R i d i n a t t was also a historical
novel, set in Småland in 1650, and in 1942 a couple of historians
criticized Moberg for historical inaccuracies in his novel.
174
Moberg defended his cause with knowledge and ease; he re­ferred
to his source material and showed that i n all essentials
his novel is plausible. Many years later, Professor Gerhard
Hafström i n a thorough study proved that Moberg's novel R i d i
n a t t in no respect gives the wrong picture of conditions in Små­land
in the 1650s (See E m i g r a t i o n e r , 1968).
To Moberg, the debate in 1942 was of great importance for
the future, and in 1943 he contributed a long article ("Om his­toriska
romanen") to the calendar V i n t e r g a t a n . Here he stated
his view on imaginative historical writing in the following way:
"Ett enda, oavvisligt krav bör ställas på ett arbete, som upp­träder
som en historisk roman: Det skall göra en försvunnen
tids miljö levande för läsarnas fantasi och ge så mycken illusion
av gången verklighet, att händelseförloppet kan godtagas som
möjligt."3
Three key-expressions can be sorted out in Moberg's long
article, and they sum up his demands on the historical novel:
it must be vividly lucid, historically convincing, and create i l l u ­sion
of reality. Moberg maintains that a historical novel must
be convincing and credible, but this must not be confused with
demanding historical exactitude. "History tells us what has hap­pened,
the novel what might have happened," he wrote in a new
article on historical novels in O t r o n s a r t i k l a r (1973).
The starting point for Moberg as a writer of fiction is reality,
but he must not copy reality, he must also make full use of his
power of imagination and thus create an illusion of reality. In
the same essay in O t r o n s a r t i k l a r Moberg said of Strindberg and
his stories in S v e n s k a öden o c h äventyr: "Strindberg slarvade
mer än någon före honom med det historiska, men i n sina berät­telser
gav han läsarna full illusion av en historisk verklighet. I
dikten återskapade han det förflutna och väckte dess männi­skor
till liv igen."4
Moberg's aim i n his historical novels is to reach Strindberg's
ability to create illusion and to be vividly lucid and convincing.
In his emigrant novels Moberg managed to make his characters
so convincing that to some readers they came alive. It has been
said that people have come to the cemetery at Chisago Lake to
put flowers on Kristina's tombstone, and to the parish church
at Ljuder i n Småland to have a look at the bridal crown that
175
U l r i k a i Västergöhl, the Glad One, donated to the church in
Moberg's novel S i s t a b r e v e t t i l l S v e r i g e (1959).
In his novels Moberg also makes use of what he, in his young
years, learned from Edgar Allan Poe's way of writing. Poe's
technique Moberg described in this way i n Berättelser u r m i n
l e v n a d : "Han hopar i historiens början en mängd vardagliga,
triviala detaljer av full trovärdighet och övergår så långsamt
och skickligt till de otroliga händelserna, att den fängslade lä­saren
inte upptäcker skarven."5
Moberg used the same technique in the first chapters of his
emigrant novel, U t v a n d r a r n a (1949). He gives a detailed account
of the actual conditions in Ljuder parish i n Småland in 1846,
and he also tells the true story of the religious group "åkianer¬
na" in the 1780s. But right there he turns from reality to fiction:
from a world of facts, figures, names, we are carried into a world
of fiction, where the author makes "åkianismen" appear again
in the 1840s of the novel.
There is no historical reality behind this, but a great deal of
probability. Moberg's characters emigrated from Småland in
1850. By that time the Baptists had begun to appear in parts
of Småland, and sheriffs and clergymen took action against this
"heresy." In the late 1840s more than one thousand people from
some northern Swedish provinces emigrated to America, after
being denied their rights to worship God in the way their leader,
Eric Janson, taught them. The consequence of this was an ex­odus
that resulted in the founding of the Bishop H i l l colony in
Illinois.
This is the historical background for what Moberg in his emi­grant
epic relates about the persecution of Danjel Andreasson
and "åkianerna" and their decision to emigrate to America. To
make his description even more convincing, he mixed authentic
dialogs and events from the trials i n the 1780s against the real
"åkianer." Altogether it must be said about Moberg's descrip­tion
that you cannot get closer to the historical truth i n writing
an imaginative historical novel.
In my book, V i l h e l m M o b e r g s e m i g r a n t e p o s (1974), I have
shown to what extent Moberg used a documentary background in
writing his four emigrant novels. His sources were of various
kinds: scientific books on emigration and contemporary descrip-
178
tions of travels to and life in the Middle West, manuscripts and
settlers' diaries, collections of letters from emigrants, maps,
pamphlets and emigrant handbooks, an old textbook of science
and a cookbook, church records and calendars, and all sorts of
notices and articles in newspapers, especially H e m l a n d e t , the old
Swedish-American newspaper. In many cases only written doc­uments
could give him the necessary background for his novels,
but if possible he wanted further evidence. He corresponded
with experts and people with local knowledge, he visited muse­ums
and took lots of notes, and he talked to old settlers in M i n ­nesota.
A l l the facts and episodes he collected, he used in order
to give an air of authenticity to his novels. He copied and quoted,
but above all he reshaped and rearranged what he found so as
to suit his purpose, and he fused all his disparate sources into his
own world of fiction.
Moberg's emigrant novels have a solid documentary back­ground,
and on this foundation he builds his own house of fic­tion.
His epic is first and foremost a story of some persons who
emigrated from Småland to America, not a history of Swedish
emigration. To Moberg, his emigrant epic was also a link in ful­filling
the plan for his writing that he had clearly worded in
the last pages of the novel S o l d a t m e d b r u t e t gevär in 1944: to
describe in his books the poor and nameless people of the past
all those whom history had forgotten. That plan he fulfilled to
the very last in writing M i n s v e n s k a h i s t o r i a , berättad för f o l k et
(=told to the people).
Moberg also held the view that people are basically the same
through the centuries. There would e. g. be no differences, he
argued, in thoughts and opinions between 1780 and 1850 among
the common people i n a small, rural parish. Therefore, it is im­portant
for an author to be able to listen to the voices of the
past, to recreate its world and its people, and make it all come
to life again. Now and then, here and there, are fused and con­fused
in his historical novels, and the same is true of Moberg's
Swedish history. In volume one of M m s v e n s k a h i s t o r i a (1970),
Moberg stated as one of his principles in the foreword: "under
historievandringen går jag ständigt från det förflutna till det
närvarande och från det närvarande tillbaka till det förflutna;
jag anser nämligen att jämförelser och paralleller med gången
177
tid kan belysa och förklara vår egen, medan exempel från vår
tid belyser och förklarar det förgångna.""
Using this freedom of an historical traveller, going from the
past to the present and vice versa, Moberg, e. g., in volume two
(1971) describes "the women outside history." From a few lines
in the parish register about his own great-grandmother who was
"found dead on the ground," from data in old enlistment rolls
about the lives of the soldiers in their small soldier's cottages,
from present-day traces in the deep forests of grey stones, laid
out in a rectangle indicating that people once lived here, from
this scanty documentary evidence Moberg re-creates the past
and makes its people come alive again. The lives of the wom­en
in the soldiers' cottages were never recorded in any written
document, but Moberg knows how they lived i n the nineteenth
century through his own family, and their lives, he argues, must
essentially have been the same some centuries earlier.
Moberg's ability to re-create the past forms the basis of his
historical novels as well as of his own Swedish history. He used
this technique in writing the novel B r u d a r n a s källa (1946),
where four musicians come to life: one from the beginning of
the twentieth century, one from the days of pestilence i n 1710,
one from the days of King Gustav Vasa and the rebel Nils Dacke,
and one from pre-historical time, in the days of pagan sun-worship.
People from all these days and times are fused to­gether,
their life and work, their sufferings and joys, their be­ginnings
and ends melt together in the eternal recurrence of
history.
Moberg's last novel, Förrädarland (1967), makes it even
clearer that he looked upon history as a means of understand­ing
our own times—the past becomes a mirror in which we can
study ourselves. The novel describes the evil of violence and
war and the sufferings of the common people along the Swedish-
Danish border in the 1520s, but at the same time it reflects the
sufferings and hardship of all common people in any country at
any time.
When writing Förrädarland, Moberg had already spent a
couple of years studying medieval history, originally planning
a novel about the Black Death in the fourteenth century. No
such novel was written; instead his increasing interest i n his-
178
torical research made him decide to write his own history of the
Swedish people. When the first volume of M i n s v e n s k a h i s t o r ia
appeared in 1970, one of the chapters dealt with the Black Death.
Moberg had finally turned from writing historical novels to writ­ing
a narrative history.
In his preface to the first volume Moberg paid his tribute to
Anders Fryxell, i n Moberg's opinion "the Swedish master," who
in the nineteenth century wrote stories from Swedish history
for the young in forty-six volumes. It is above all Fryxell's un­orthodox
outlook on history that Moberg admired, but he also
felt a deep sympathy with Fryxell as a writer. In his autobi­ographical
book M i n h i s t o r i a s h i s t o r i a (1908), Fryxell describes
his passion for history, his toilsome and yet pleasant work, col­lecting
all the documentary facts, and his delight at planning
and imagining the forthcoming volumes. In all this Moberg
recognized himself and his own way of working, and for both
Fryxell and Moberg writing was their way of living.
The second volume of his history Moberg dedicated to Fabian
Månsson. In Månsson's dramatic and realistic way of making
history come alive, and in his clear defense of the rebel Nils
Dacke and the cause of the common people against King Gustav
Vasa and other rulers and authorities, Moberg again found a
spiritual twin. For Strindberg, F r y x e l l and Månsson as historical
narrators Moberg felt a deep sympathy, but Geijer and Grim-berg
in Moberg's eyes had a loyal and reverent approach to his­tory
that he could not appreciate.
Moberg's history is above all his own history, and he himself
laid great emphasis on the word "my" in the title of the two
volumes of M i n s v e n s k a h i s t o r i a . In his preface to the first
volume he stated: "Jag återger objektiva fakta, men tolkningen
av dem är min egen subjektiva."7
In his history Moberg often gave voice to his personal opinion
of the great characters in Swedish history, and he clearly stated
what he liked and disliked. His portraits of Engelbrekt and
Nils Dacke, with whom he felt deep sympathy and understanding,
as well as that of Gustav Vasa, whom he regarded as a tyrant
and criticized severely, are fascinating and engaging. But he
found the greatest pleasure in writing those chapters where he
could be personal and make himself, and his forefathers, heard:
179
chapters on the Swedish peasant, on the bark-bread, the forests,
the villages, and all the anonymous people of history. Here he
could travel freely from past to present, and here he could feel
free to write in a more narrative and epic way.
Only two volumes were published of Moberg's M i n s v e n s ka
h i s t o r i a , and the material that was left after Moberg's death is
very limited and sketchy, collected in three very thin folders.
In a letter to Dr. Ragnar Svanström, a well-known historian
and from 1969 Moberg's publisher, he enclosed a "very prelimi­nary
list of contents for a planned third volume," dated February
7, 1972, and going from Nils Dacke to Axel Oxenstierna and
the year 1650, altogether a list of thirteen chapters. But almost
nothing of this was written. Moberg was tired, very often i l l ,
sleepless and depressed, and he sometimes felt that the material
grew too large and heavy: "—jag riskerar att bryta ryggen av
mig under dess massa,"s as he wrote in another letter to Dr.
Svanström.
In the remaining material there are a few pages with notes
on the sons of Gustav Vasa, showing that Eric X I V both fasci­nated
and repelled Moberg, while Johan III bored him and K a rl
I X was repulsive to him. But most of the material concerns
Olaus Petri, whom Moberg regarded as the greatest Swedish
personality of the sixteenth century. He admired his many-sided
talents, his honesty and his moral courage. He stresses
Olaus Petri's passion for social justice and his attempts to de­fend
the rights of the common people. In his notes he also at­tacks
Strindberg for having portrayed Olaus Petri as a renegade
in his historical drama Mäster O l o f , and Moberg writes: "Den
historiske Olof var sannerligen ingen avfälling. Det var konsek­vens
i hans gärning."9 Moberg maintained that Olaus Petri all his
life continued his criticism of King Gustav Vasa, and he found
it revolting that Olaus Petri's great historical chronicle was
suppressed by the king and not printed in Sweden until 1818.
One sentence in the sketchy material Moberg may have planned
to use as a final sentence in his chapter on Olaus Petri: "Kungen
segrade i samtiden, Olaus har segrat inför eftervärlden."10
Not even the chapter on Olaus Petri was completed, however,
before Moberg died in August, 1973. But the various drafts and
180
sketches prove that this chapter would have been yet another
fascinating story of a man who fought for truth and liberty
against oppression and authorities.
NOTES
1 "History was the only subject which really fascinated me. It was actu­ally
fun, the only thing on the curriculum which was fun. So I learned
various things about the subject, too. Our textbook was C. T. Odhner's
T h e H i s t o r y of t h e Fatherland for the Lower G r a d e s in its twelfth re­vised
edition."
- "I have been obsessed by curiosity about mankind's past."
8 "One single absolute demand should be placed on a work which claims
to be an historical novel: It must make the milieu of a period in the past
live in the reader's imagination and give so much an illusion of past reality
that the action can be accepted as possible."
4 "Strindberg was more careless about historical matters than any prede­cessor,
but in his stories he gave the readers thorough illusion of historic
reality. In his creative writing he recreated the past and brought its peo­ple
alive again."
5 "In the beginning of the story he heaps up a great many everyday,
trivial details that are absolutely believable and then so slowly and skill­fully
goes on to the unbelievable events that the reader does not discover
the exaggeration."
6 "during my wandering through history I go regularly from the past to
the present and from the present back to the past; I believe comparisons
and parallels with the past can throw light on and explain the present
while examples from our time throw light on and explain the past."
7 "I present objective facts, but the interpretation is my own subjective
one."
8 "I'm risking breaking my back under this burden."
9 "The historic Olof was certainly no renegade. There was consistency
in all he did."
1 0 "The king won in his day; Olaus has won before posterity."
181